khosq.com

Is this what Levon Ter-Petrosian meant in his first speech on September 21, 2007?

In response to: Is this what LTP meant, I have found this information on Kocharian's plan to exchange Meghri for Lachin.

Following a 29th November OSCE Minsk Conference in 2004, document 10364 deals with the conflict over the Nagorno-Karabakh region, and that document includes the following:

“According to Azerbaijani sources, in 1997 Presidents Aliyev and Kocharian (My note: formerly of Karabakh, but at that time Armenia’s PM) reached an understanding based on a swap of territories, which included the exchange of corridors in order to ensure continuity between Armenia and N-K on one side and Azerbaijan and its exclave Nakhichevan on the other side”.

(My note: Karen Demerchian and Vazgen Sarkissian found out about what Kocharian was up to and they managed to stop his plot. They were of course among the seven murdered in Parliament on the 27th October 1999)

The OSCE report continues with: “Subsequently Armenia rejected the arrangement, which had also become known as the Sadarak agreement. The Armenian view was that a swap of territories was not possible as it would cut Armenia off its border with Iran”.

Then the OSCE report explains how Kocharian continued with his negotiations, adding that: “In April 2001, on the occasion of the joint accession of Armenia and Azerbaijan to the Council of Europe, the two presidents met in Paris upon the invitation of President Chirac of France. Reportedly, an agreement was reached, referred to as the Paris principles. Subsequently, in a week long negotiation in a proximity format in Key West, US, the Paris agreement was put on paper. The bargaining seems to be about exchange of corridors, the Lachin corridor linking Armenia with N-K and the Meghri corridor linking Azerbaijan with Nakhichevan”.

LTP referred to this swap of territories during his Liberty Square post election demonstrations, when he added that Kocharian had secretly agreed a $4.3 Billion Dollar compensation for the deal.

Karabakh Betrayal Going to Plan

PACE might not have been too strict on Kocharian for violating human rights in Armenia, including killing a few Armenians. But PACE now insists that Armenia free the occupied territory of Azerbaijan - unconditionally and immediately.

This was confirmed by PACE President Luis Maria de Puig in Azerbaijan on 1 July, during his meeting with the representatives of the political parties represented in the parliament.

According to Puig, the Resolution passed in the summer session of PACE supports the territorial integrity and inviolability of Azerbaijani borders approved by the international community.

The PACE President said he was to visit Armenia the next week, and added: “In Armenia I will mention the importance of Armenia’s freeing the Azerbaijani territories”.

My Comment: Also note that Medvedev is due (or maybe already is) in Baku - the pieces are coming together nicely. But will the people of Armenia ever get to know how much is in the pot?

Armenia is obliged to return the surrounding occupied territories to Azerbaijan, that is not the question. That was LTP's plan in 1998, to gradually return the surrounding territories, starting with five, and that was the reason Kocharian forced him out of office.

In the run-up to the recent Presidential election farce, both Kocharian and Sargsyan promised the Armenian people that they would never capitulate on the Karabakh question.

My argument has been for the past 18 months that Kocharian, together with the World Bank and the IMF, have been preparing this moment for several years, and now they are simply going through the various stages of implementation - starting with the immediate return of seven territories.

The betrayal part of the equation is that Kocharian and Sargsyan are not signing the agreement to return the surrounding territories because it is the right thing to do, they are doing it purely for personal gain - Several Billions of Dollars!

And the international community, now including PACE, are all very well aware of their intentions.

But the people who have the priority right to know the details, the people of Armenia (and for that matter of Karabakh and the surrounding territories) will never know their rights. They will only suffer as a result of what Kocharian, Sargsyan, the World Bank, the IMF and the Minsk group have been cooking up in secret for several years - and now with PACE on board?

That is the Betrayal!

I have never claimed, or implied that the Armenian authorities are giving Karabagh back to Azerbaijan, and the simple reader should not have that impression. I have argued for a long time that Kocharian and his cronies (including in the WB and the IMF) have for several years been preparing for the time when the agreement to return the surrounding territories would be signed, and although up to the presidential election RSK and SAS promised that they would never capitulate, the time is now almost here.

When that agreement is signed, there will be very serious and problematic repercussions, which will drastically effect the lives of tens of thousands, firstly those Armenian/Karabakhi citizens who will be forced to leave their homes in the surrounding territories, secondly those in Karabakh, who will be under increased threat without their buffer zone, and then for those in Armenia, who will have to compete with the tens of thousands who will be driven from these regions to Yerevan, and who will inevitably become connected to the tyrannical Kocharian / Sargsyan regime.

Giving back the surrounding territories is inevitable, it should have been done long ago, and it is what LTP planned to do in 1998, and why RSK forced him out of his Presidential Palace.

The point is that RSK and SAS will never give back the surrounding territories peacefully without a major compensation package, and that compensation package has undoubtedly long been agreed - in secret. The people who will suffer as a result of returning the surrounding territories have the right to know about this compensation package, which will no doubt be several billions of dollars.

This will indeed be 'illegitimate use of public funds'. The problem is that unless this scam is exposed, the public will never know about the public funds that will be illegitimately used, or about what RSK and SAS have been cooking up for the past several years. They will never know about the compensation package that rightly belongs to them.

And it will be a very serious 'abuse of power'. RSK and SAS should not be allowed to abuse their authority and use the Karabakh conflict for their personal multi-billion dollar gain.

Garen,

My opinion is that this plan is not connected with the neo-con agenda to start a war with Iran; I see the two as separate situations.

I have long argued through my 'Blowing the World Bank Whistle' campaign that Armenia, Azerbaijan and Russia have for years been preparing for the resolution which is about to be signed as stage one in resolving the Karabakh issue. (And that is the betrayal I am keen to expose, that it has for so long been done in secret).

Kocharian has long been promising Bryza that he would sign the agreement, but in his usual sleazy style, he has been putting it off, not wanting to be the person who would take the flack for actually putting pen to paper. He therefore reached agreement with Sargsyan that he would support Sargsyan's run for Presidency on the understanding that Sargsyan would sign the agreement straight after being inaugurated.

Sargsyan agreed to that, knowing that he would use the agreement as leverage with the international community, to get them to support his self-proclaimed Presidency. And, despite a few ups and downs, that is the stage we have now come to, and signing of the agreement is now being rushed through, with the support and encouragement of Russia, the U.S. and Europe. These rushed meetings we are now seeing, in St. Petersburg, Moscow, Baku, and soon between Sargsyan and Aliyev, are all part of the final arrangements, including most importantly the multi-billion dollar pot of money (which will no doubt unfortunately remain a secret).

And all the hullabaloo they are making about the process at the moment is so that when the agreement is eventually signed, nobody will bat an eye and think about questioning it.

The increased rhetoric about the U.S. (or Israel) attacking Iran is simply a psychological ploy to heighten the idea of threats from rogue states against the U.S. in the run-up to the U.S. November Presidential election. It is an attempt by the Republican party to boost McCain's otherwise less than pipe dream chances of holding on to the Whitehouse.

On the 26th June, Mikhail Alexandrov, head of the Caucasus department at Moscow’s Institute for Commonwealth of Independent States, said that “The Karabakh problem will not be resolved against the West’s wishes".

(my comment) The West wishes that the surrounding territories be immediately returned to Azerbaijan, which presumably is an Armenian concession.

Today, the 16th July, during a news conference in Yerevan, Mikhail Alexandrov contradicts that statement by saying "Armenia will never make fundamental concession in (the) Karabakh issue" http://www.panarmenian.net/news/eng/?nid=26624

The expert then goes on to say that "no one except for Baku wants to replace the OSCE Minsk Group".

(my comment) Was it not Armenia's Speaker Tigran Torossian who announced to the Armenian press that Armenia might eliminate the OSCE Minsk Group from the procedures?

Then Alexandrov goes on to say, “Ilham Aliyev seems to be irritated at Serzh Sargsyan’s victory in the presidential election. Western countries have obviously assured Aliyev that with Ter-Petrossian coming to power in Armenia, the Karabakh problem will be resolved in favor of Azerbaijan. However, it didn’t happen, so much the better,” Alexandrov said.

(my comment) It looks like Mikhail Alexandrov has become a fully fledged member of the Armenian propaganda machine, dribbling this contradictory nonsense into the media - not unexpectedly through PanArmenian.

Garen,
Yes you have apparently lost track of what exactly was the official Armenian (Sargsyan / Kocharian) position, and quite understandably, because it keeps changing. One day one or the other says that he will not return the territories, then the next day one or the other says he will. Then Kocharian throws in the idea that he does not know about the apparently new formula that Sargsyan has on his mind.

Returning the territories is in the minds of Sargsyan and Kocharian itself a major concession, and they accuse LTP of selling out to Azerbaijan by being ready to go down that path.

Alternatively, the people of Armenia should presumably understand that Sargsyan and Kocharian have already agreed to that part of the operation. Is that correct?

The boundaries have already been agreed, and the surrounding territories are understood to be Azerbaijani sovereignty. Azerbaijan consistently and clearly states that it will never concede to Nagorny Karabakh independence (as does the rest of the World, except Armenia and Karabakh), although it has agreed that an autonomous enclave could be agreed, with a local administration, but answerable to Baku, and with Azerbaijani sovereignty.

The position of the Minsk group is that the fate of Karabakh will be decided after the territories are returned to Azerbaijani control.

Garen,

This takes us back to where this article started, with an 12th June 2008 article by RFE/RL analyst Liz Fuller

http://www.rferl.org/content/Article/1144604.html

Analysis: Presidents Give Green Light For Continuation Of Karabakh Talks, which in full goes as follows:

The presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan, Serzh Sargsyan and Ilham Aliyev, met for one hour on June 6 on the sidelines of a CIS summit in St. Petersburg to discuss prospects for resolving the Karabakh conflict.

It was the first such top-level meeting since Sargsyan's inauguration as president on April 9; Aliyev refused to meet with Sargsyan on the sidelines of the NATO summit in Bucharest several days earlier, RFE/RL's Armenian Service reported on March 31.

The two presidents agreed on June 6 that their foreign ministers should continue the ongoing talks on ways to resolve the conflict on the basis of the so-called Madrid Proposals presented to the conflict sides in November 2007 by the three co-chairmen of the OSCE Minsk Group. In an interview with Russia's Vesti-24 television on June 2, Armenian Foreign Minister Eduard Nalbandian characterized those proposals as "a good basis for finding a solution to the conflict." In addition, the co-chairs will travel to Armenia and Azerbaijan at the end of this month for further talks aimed at narrowing the differences between the two sides.

Both Nalbandian and his Azerbaijani counterpart, Elmar Mammadyarov, described the June 6 talks to journalists as "constructive" and "positive," RFE/RL's Armenian Service reported. On June 10, the website kavkaz-uzel.ru quoted Mammadyarov as saying that Sargsyan's approach differed slightly from that of his predecessor, Robert Kocharian, in terms of unspecified "nuances."

The two ministers also explained on June 6 that the Madrid Proposals were not discussed during the talks, as the approach of both sides requires further evaluation. U.S. Minsk Group co-Chairman and Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Matthew Bryza made the similar point that the Madrid Proposals "are simply proposals...and the two sides do not agree with them completely," the website day.az reported. "They need to be perfected, and both the mediators and the presidents agreed to continue work to that end," Bryza continued.

The written text of the Madrid Proposals has not been made public, but they are reportedly based on the so-called Basic Principles for resolving the conflict that the co-chairmen went public with two years ago. "These principles include the phased redeployment of Armenian troops from Azerbaijani territories around Nagorno-Karabakh, with special modalities for Kelbacar and Lachin districts [separating Karabakh from Armenia proper]," according to the text posted on June 28, 2006, on the website of the U.S. Embassy in Yerevan.

"Demilitarization of those territories would follow. A referendum or popular vote would be agreed, at an unspecified future date, to determine the final legal status of Nagorno-Karabakh." "An international peacekeeping force would be deployed," added the statement. "A joint commission would be agreed to implement the agreement. International financial assistance would be made available for de-mining, reconstruction, resettlement of internally displaced persons in the formerly occupied territories and the war-affected regions of Nagorno-Karabakh. The sides would renounce the use or threat of use of force, and international and bilateral security guarantees and assurances would be put in place."

In a June 5 interview with the Russian news agency Regnum, Bryza said the Minsk Group co-chairs see their task as "developing an agreement or formula that would allow the two sides here -- Armenia and Azerbaijanis -- to agree on the status of Karabakh. I do not know what their agreement will be. All I know is that we need to try to get two sides to get to an agreement on status and that's going to take a long, long time."

Bryza acknowledged the risk involved in insisting that Armenian forces be withdrawn from the seven districts of Azerbaijan contiguous to Karabakh that they currently occupy before a firm agreement is reached on the unrecognized republic's future status vis-a-vis the Azerbaijan Republic, noting that the withdrawal will not happen unless the Armenian side feels it has secured from Azerbaijan a concession of comparable magnitude. Similarly, Bryza continued, on the Azerbaijani side there is a political risk to giving to Armenia what Armenia needs to agree to give back the territories.

At the same time, Bryza stressed that an Armenian withdrawal would improve the security situation in the conflict zone and lessen the potential for a resumption of hostilities (such as took place in March of this year). He said that "there are many elements of this peace plan that are attractive to Armenia," including the provision of a land corridor (the so-called Lachin corridor) connecting Karabakh with the Republic of Armenia. Such a land link is one of Armenia's three basic requirements from any potential peace plan.

While Bryza continues to insist that any solution to the Karabakh conflict will require concessions from both sides, some Azerbaijani officials clearly believe that Baku is in a stronger position to resist any unpalatable concessions in the wake of the adoption in mid-March by the UN General Assembly of a resolution condemning the continued occupation by Armenian forces of Azerbaijani territory.

Commenting on the June 5 St. Petersburg talks, Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry spokesman Xazar Ibrahim told journalists in Baku on June 9 that resolution has given rise to "a totally new situation." He also stressed that discussion of Karabakh's final status should not begin until Armenian forces have withdrawn from all the Azerbaijani territory they currently control, and he implied that Baku will insist that the proposed referendum on Karabakh's final status should exclude any variant that would not preserve Azerbaijan's territorial integrity, and that it might not even grant the disputed region autonomy within Azerbaijan.

Like Bryza, Ibrahim did not mention any time frame for conducting such a referendum, but the online daily zerkalo.az on May 28 quoted former Russian Minsk Group Co-chairman Vladimir Kazimirov as saying that it should be held no later than five years after the signing of a formal settlement, rather than waiting for 10-15 years.

Mammadyarov on June 10 inferred that Azerbaijan's commitment to resolving the conflict peacefully, rather than militarily, itself constitutes a concession, and that the only other concession it would agree to would be to grant Nagorno-Karabakh any conceivable level of autonomy within Azerbaijan. In that context, the example he cited was that of Tatarstan within the Russian Federation.

Nalbandian for his part told journalists in Yerevan on June 11 that he considers it imperative that representatives of the unrecognized Nagorno-Karabakh republic participate in the "final stage" of negotiations on resolving the conflict, Noyan Tapan reported.

End of Report..............

Garen,

With respect to the referendum in Armenia, I am afraid that that is not part of the equation, which is the fundamental issue behind the problem I feel should be brought into the open.

But it is correct to say that a final agreement can not be reached without consensus from the incumbent Karabakh authority.

I have masses of other documents going back to 1995, but if you would like to look through those, maybe I could send them to you separately?